


where you go when you're alone

by mcmeekin



Series: let me go home [5]
Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers Megaforce, Power Rangers Samurai
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Party, Friendship, Gen, Holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 06:27:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5574430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcmeekin/pseuds/mcmeekin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So you mean to tell me that red rangers sit in the cold by themselves for reasons other than brooding?”</p><p>(The Samurai rangers throw a holiday party. Lauren doesn't like crowds.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	where you go when you're alone

**Author's Note:**

> a holiday gift for all my enablers on twitter, especially the neo-tzachor hell clique

It always hits her faster than she can process.

The party becomes too much, too loud, all at once. Thirteen people in a paper house is suddenly suffocating and intense in a way she can’t handle. She slips away while everyone is preoccupied with a falling ginger bread house, desperate for air, for quiet, for calm.

Lauren stands in the entryway to the house, hands on her knees, breathing heavily in and out. It’s only the edge of a panic attack; she caught it in time. She can handle this.

_Three good things,_ she repeats to herself over and over again until her brain realigns itself enough for pictures to form in her head.

_Three_ : Jayden throwing snowball cookies at Antonio’s mouth while Emily and Kevin loudly swap bets on how many he can successfully catch.

_Two_ : Gia’s unbridled delight at Orion coincidentally unwrapping a pair of silver swim trunks with Rudolf plastered on the butt in the White Elephant gift swap.

A swell of laughter bubbles up from the party down the hallway, interrupting her thought process, jarring her away from _One_. She pushes open the door before she even thinks about it, stumbling out into the cold.

She sees him almost immediately. Troy’s sitting just off center in the training area, leaning back on his forearms so his head is tilted upward towards the stars, a small smile playing at his features.

Irrationally, she wonders if the stars look brighter to him, way out here in the countryside of an island he’d never heard of before they invited him to a holiday party. She’s been to enough big cities now to know that stargazing is more fun at Shiba House.

The door closes loudly behind her; she knows he heard it, but he doesn’t react.

She wonders if it’s intentional, if he also came out here to escape from the noise. Wonders if he wouldn’t appreciate an intrusion. She stuffs her hands in her pockets, unsure of where to go or how to proceed. The yard isn’t big enough to ignore him, she realizes. So she risks it.

“You’re not sitting in the right place,” she calls to him to announce her presence.

He barely turns his head to call back over his shoulder, “And how do you figure that?”

She takes that as an invitation and slowly goes to sit next to him on the training platform, folding her legs underneath her before pointing to the far side of the yard. “Do you see that bench on the edge of the garden? That’s where we all go when we want to be alone and brood.”

He cracks a small smile, and she’s thankful that he got the joke. Still, he comments, “I’m _not_ brooding alone.”

She stares at him for a moment before sweeping her gaze pointedly around the empty yard, then looking back at him.

He rolls his eyes. “Okay, I’m alone, but I’m not brooding.”

She raises her eyebrows, mock-dubious. “So you mean to tell me that red rangers sit in the cold by themselves for reasons other than brooding?”

“Hey!” he protests. “You’re not allowed to make fun of your own color; that’s cheating!”

“Oh is it? I don’t remember that being one of the rules.”

“It’s in there somewhere. I think it’s a subclause of the personal gain rule,” he informs her seriously.

She nods, just as seriously. “Ah, well, good thing the rules only sometimes of apply to me. I’m a part time employee, you see.” He raises his eyebrows at her. She nods again. “It’s true. I only just manage to fill my ‘bad decisions made without listening to my teammates’ quota requirement for official ranger status.”

He chuckles, turning his gaze back up toward the sky. She follows his eyes up to the stars.

“Do you know the constellations?” she asks, more to fill the lull of silence than anything else.

“Emma does,” he answers. “I just think the stars are pretty.”

“Beauties in the abyss,” she murmurs. “That’s what Kevin calls stars." She pauses before leaning over and whispering conspiratorially, "I think he’s scared of space.”

“A lot to be scared of, up there,” he replies.

“Not anymore,” she counters. “You beat all the bad guys, remember?”

His smile widens. “We had a little help with that, actually.”

She shrugs, looking back up at the sky. “Not much. I like to think that you guys saved every one of those stars, since your team did most of the heavy lifting.”

“With your suits,” he replies.

“Well, turns out the suit itself doesn’t mean much. You can wear red any day of the week. Doesn’t make you a red ranger.” She keeps her eyes on the sky, even as she feels his gaze settle on her. She can almost feel him getting ready to ask.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, he unexpectedly asks, “Why are you sitting out here alone in the cold?”

The retort rises in her without warning, and she only barely stops herself from asking him the same question. He deserves a real answer, she thinks, for some reason. But she pauses. She’s never really told anyone besides Jayden about her attacks in detail.

“It’s hard to explain well,” she starts hesitantly. “I—I’m not sure you could understand.”

“Try me.” He’s so open, so willing, that she can’t do anything but that.

“I own this house, and it isn’t mine.” She blurts this out before she can even think, even wonder if it’s a good way to start. But then she can’t seem to stop. “I mean, I inherited it from my father, and my name is on the deed, but it’s not…home. At least not mine. Not yet. Maybe not ever. I wasn’t raised here. Jayden was. But I was raised in isolation; I barely interacted with other people beyond two hours of daily feedback from…” She struggles for a descriptor of her mentor and settles on, “a man kind of like Ji but without his free-spirited personality.”

Troy raises his eyebrows. “Oh.”

She nods, continuing, “So I never learned how to…interact with others well. And Antonio keeps telling me that Jayden didn’t either, that he was an even bigger wreck than I was, but he’s had time to learn and adjust and I…haven’t. And I get overwhelmed because what if I never do? What if I’m always on the outside? What if this place never feels like home to me? And so on, which all culminates in panic attacks. Which I have learned to deal with. Sort of.”

“Sort of?” Troy asks.

“It’s not effective 100% of the time,” she admits. “Emily told me about it. She learned it from her childhood therapist who she went to after her sister got sick.”

“What is it?” he prompts.

“Well, when Emily would get overwhelmed with emotions that she didn’t know how to sort through in their session, her therapist would tell her to focus on three things that she could handle and talk about. And from there, the rest of it would often untangle itself.”

“That makes sense,” Troy says.

“But, I have modified it slightly for my purpose. I think of three good things,” she says.

“Three good things,” Troy repeats, a question hinging on the end of his statement.

“Yes,” she confirms. “Whenever I can’t unravel my sense of failure from my sense of self, I step away from the group and force myself to think of three good things that happened to me that day. And it works, most of the time. I do it almost daily. It keeps me grounded.”

He nods thoughtfully. “So you did that? Just now when you left the party?”

“Yes,” she says. “But I could only think of two before I came outside.”

“Hm…” Troy hums. “Well, that won’t do. Did you already use Antonio moving the mistletoe around to try and catch Jake underneath it?”

She laughs. “No, I didn’t. He did that to Mia yesterday, so I figured that’d be cheating.”

“I see your point… What about my killer ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ duet with Mike?” He grins devilishly at her.

She rolls her eyes. “Mike sings like a beached whale crying out for help, and he knows it. How about I just use, ‘The Megaforce rangers graciously visiting us on our weird island just for a holiday party’? That sounds pretty good to me.”

His smile softens. “Perfect.”

She nods. “Good.” She pushes herself onto her feet. “Now that we’ve cleared that up, come back inside with me. I think we’re about to watch that movie about the big elf.” She offers her hand to him.

“Is it maybe called _Elf?_ ” he teases, staying seated.

She rolls her eyes. “I was stuck in an isolated location with someone less fun than Ji for about fifteen years of my life, remember? I don't know what it’s called, but Mike likes it, so we’re going to watch it.”

He laughs. “All right, all right. I’ll be in in a minute; I promise.”

She drops her hand and narrows her eyes at him. “If you stand me up, I’m stealing your share of the cookies.”

“Rangers honor,” he says, holding one hand up.

She nods, satisfied with his answer, and starts to head back inside, but when she reaches the door, his voice stops her.

“Lauren?”

She turns and looks back at him. He’s still looking up at the stars.

“I think you’re thinking about home the wrong way,” he says. “I don’t think it necessarily has to be the place you live or the people who live with you. I think it can just be the three good things you think of every day.” He pauses before looking back at her over his shoulder . "That's just what I think. I'll see you inside, okay?"

She looks at him for a minute, a smile working its way onto her face. "See you," she replies finally before turning to pull the door open.

( _One_ : Troy Burrows looking up at the stars that he saved, a small, satisfied smile on his face.)


End file.
